ABSTRACT
After a long conversation, of which I have said quite enough, I went into one of the tents to present a letter of introduction to one of his Lordship’s suite. A young slight active officer was sitting in a chair at a table, covered of course with papers, when I entered. That cheery genial voice, that bright look, full of intelligence and life, struck me at once. “L—–is not in just now; but I am a friend of his,” quoth he; “and if I can be of any service, pray command me.” When he knew my name and errand, he at once proposed to show me over the fort. I could not have had a more intelligent guide, and so we sauntered about the old lines of Akbar’s engineers, and observed where his work was dovetailed into ours, and censured defects, and praised good points as long as we could stand the sun. As Stewart—for it was he—heard he was to accompany me to Cawnpore, we made arrangements for starting ere we parted. The rail, which once more makes a spasmodic effort to establish itself in India, here goes about halfway to Cawnpore. One is weary of thinking how much blood, disgrace, misery, and horror had been saved to us if the rail had been but a little longer here, had been at all there, had been completed at another place. It has been a heavy mileage of neglect for which we have already paid dearly. But the bill is not yet settled in full.
